By Peter Stanford

7:00AM GMT 21 Mar 2015

Julie Lynn Evans has been a child psychotherapist for 25 years, working in hospitals, schools and with families, and she says she has never been so busy.

“In the 1990s, I would have had one or two attempted suicides a year – mainly teenaged girls taking overdoses, the things that don’t get reported. Now, I could have as many as four a month.”

And it’s not, she notes, simply a question of her reputation as both a practitioner and a writer drawing so many people to the door of her cosy consulting rooms in west London where we meet. “If I try to refer people on, everyone else is choc-a-bloc too. We are all saying the same thing. There has been an explosion in numbers in mental health problems amongst youngsters.”

The Care Minister, Norman Lamb, has this week been promising a “complete overhaul” of the system that deals with these troubled tweens and teens, after a Department of Health report highlighted the negative impact of funding cuts. And the three main party leaders have all made encouraging pre-election noises about putting more resources into mental health services.

Yet, while the down-to-earth Lynn Evans welcomes the prospect of additional funding, this divorced, Canadian-born mother of three grown up children, isn’t convinced that it is the solution to the current crisis.

The floodgates of desperate youngsters opened, she recalls, in 2010. “I saw my work increase by a mad amount and so did others I work with. Suddenly everything got much more dangerous, much more immediate, much more painful.”

Official figures confirm the picture she paints, with emergency admissions to child psychiatric wards doubling in four years, and those young adults hospitalised for self-harm up by 70 per cent in a decade.

“Something is clearly happening,” she says, “because I am seeing the evidence in the numbers of depressive, anorexic, cutting children who come to see me. And it always has something to do with the computer, the Internet and the smartphone.”Issues such as cyber-bullying are, of course, nothing new, and schools now all strive to develop robust policies to tackle them, but Lynn Evans’ target is both more precise and more general. She is pointing a finger of accusation at the smartphones - “pocket rockets” as she calls them – which are now routinely in the hands of over 80 per cent of secondary school age children. Their arrival has been, she notes, a key change since 2010.

“It’s a simplistic view, but I think it is the ubiquity of broadband and smartphones that has changed the pace and the power and the drama of mental illness in young people.”With a smartphone - as opposed to an earlier generation of “brick” mobiles that could only be used to keep in touch with worried parents - youngsters can now, she says, “access the internet without adult supervision in parks, on street, wherever they are, and then they can go anywhere. So there are difficult chat rooms, self-harming websites, anorexia websites, pornography, and a whole invisible world of dark places. In real life, we travel with our children. When they are connected via their smartphone to the web, they usually travel alone”.

She quotes one website that has come up in conversations with youngsters in the consulting room. “I wouldn’t have known about it otherwise, but it is where men masturbate in real time while children as young as 12 watch them. So parents think their children are upstairs in their bedrooms with their friends having popcorn and no alcohol, yet this is the sort of thing they are watching. And as they watch, they are saying, 'this is what sex is’. It is leaving them really distressed.”

Mums and dads who allow young teenagers to have smartphones – and she wouldn’t say yes until they were 14 - must also take a more active role in policing the use of them, she says, however unpopular it will make them with their offspring.

“I think children should have privacy within their own rooms and in their diaries, and I think they should have the Internet, but I don’t think they should have both, certainly not until they have proved they are completely safe and reliable. So, check their browser history, look at their Facebook, Instagram, and then discuss it with them.

“When they are 15, you don’t, for example, let them go to pub, or stay out in the local park at four in morning, yet they’ll get into much less trouble physically there than they will on their smartphones on the internet. I’m not talking about paedophiles preying on them. I’m talking about anorexia sites and sites where they will be bullied.”

That is where the damage is being done to their mental health, she argues. Harmful, too, is the sheer length of exposure to the virtual world via their smartphones that youngsters have now. Her strong advice to parents is to limit access. “Use it like parents used to use TV with their children. 'You can watch this but you can’t watch that’, and there’s a watershed. We need that kind of discipline.”

How about just banning it altogether? “I believe that parents who don’t allow the Internet can cause as much damaged as parents who allow too much. Their children are not able to work and play and be with the rest of the children in the playground. It’s has to be about balance, not banning.”

Living so much in a virtual world has other negative consequences, she suggests. It gives young users no time to reflect or learn about the consequences of their actions. “So if you are having a WhatsApp chat with your friends, and it all goes very wrong, you can say to them, 'I wish you were dead’. Now perfectly nice children find themselves saying, 'I wish you were dead,’ because they haven’t got time to reflect, and then their words go everywhere. Kindness, compassion, ethics, it’s all out of the window when you are in this instantaneous gossip world with no time to think, and no time to learn about having relationships.”

Parents also need to think about what example they set their children by their own attachment to their smartphones. “We know all about the importance of childhood attachment and good healthy childhood relationships with parents. Yet, if you look in the local park, you see children at a very early age not getting the tender, intense love they used to because their parents are always on their smartphones. Put them down, and be with your kids from day one. They’re not getting what they need from us to build up their core sense of self and that can create the problems I see down the line.”

Julie Lynn Evans is, in one way, a reluctant campaigner. She is keen to point out that this isn’t happening to all children, and that there are other potential causes for the current crisis – “results-driven school programmes”, busy parents and the recession are three she quotes, not to mention “organic” mental health such as schizophrenia.

And, she says, she has enough on her plate, dealing daily with the current crisis in adolescent mental health, without getting drawn into a broader argument about how to tackle its root causes. Indeed, she confesses that two weeks ago she was so exhausted that she even contemplated giving up work altogether.

“I was dealing with a young boy who had just jumped out of a car and run into oncoming traffic. Two psychiatrists and I were tearing our hair out trying to find a safe place to put him. We tried for four hours to find him a hospital bed, and there was nowhere for him no hospital bed available. He ended up going went home and we put in nurses 24 hours a day, but not a lot of people are going to be able to do that. At the end of it, I was so tired I thought I can’t go on”.

She is emphatically not anti-internet, but rather anti- the negative side effects of it on our young. “It is battering our children’s brains. They have no times for the goodies in life – kindness, acceptance, conversation, face-to-face, nature, nurture. They need to find a sense of purpose by connecting with other people, not being on the Internet all the time.”

If parents and schools engage with it openly and together, this can be tackled, she urges. “If we can grab what’s going on by the horns, and do something about it, then I am optimistic. I’m not optimistic, though, if we just say it's the government 's fault and we’ve got to have more money.”

LA Firefighters radio ad against cell towers! -- please forward

This is a 30 second ad. It's in mp3 format.

NEWS FLASH! Listen to this radio ad. It will be broadcast every hour from now until Tuesday.

"This is fire captain Lew Currier. Los Angeles County is installing cell towers on 86 fire stations near you. The radiation generated by these seven story eye sores can cause debilitating health effects. Studies suggest nearby families could get sick too, yet the board of supervisors is erecting these toxic towers without public hearings or required studies. This time, be there for us, your firefighters. Call the Board of Supervisors at 213-974-1411. Tell them to stop the cell towers, NOW. This message is brought to you by Los Angeles County firefighters local 1014."

Precaution Nixed at the NY Times (Microwave News)

From Louis Slesin, Editor, Microwave News:

The New York Times went into damage control mode yesterday after Nick Bilton, a tech columnist and a rising star at the newspaper, suggested that precaution is the best approach to the use of cell phones and wearable electronics.

No sooner had Bilton’s column hit print that Margaret Sullivan, the Times’ Public Editor, chastised him for his naive analysis. Sullivan targeted the lack of “sophisticated evaluation of serious research.”

Friday, March 20, 2015

County resolves cell tower lawsuits

DeKalb County resolved lawsuits filed by communications company T-Mobile. The lawsuits were filed after Interim CEO Lee May denied permit applications to place T-Mobile cell phone towers at two DeKalb County schools.

The U.S. District Court of North Georgia granted DeKalb County a summary judgment in T-Mobile’s lawsuit regarding the cell tower planned for the Lakeside High School property. Subsequently, T-Mobile canceled nine leases for cell towers on other school properties which led to the voluntary dismissal of the second lawsuit regarding the cell tower at Margaret Harris Comprehensive School.

T-Mobile also remitted $5,378.61 to DeKalb County to cover an award of court costs related to the litigation.

INCREASED MORTALITY IN AMATEUR RADIO OPERATORS DUE TO LYMPHATIC AND HEMATOPOIETIC MALIGNANCIES

Abstract

To search for potentially carcinogenic effects of electromagnetic field exposures, the author conducted a population-based study of mortality in US amateur radio operators. Ascertainment of Washington State and California amateur radio operators (67,829 persons) was done through the 1984 US Federal Communications Commission Amateur Radio Station and/or Operator License file. A total of 2,485 deaths were located for the period from January 1,1979 through December 31, 1984, in a population of amateur radio operators which accumulated 232,499 person-years at risk. The all-cause standardized mortality ratio (SMR) was 71, but a statistically significant increased mortality was seen for cancers of the other lymphatic tissues (SMR = 162), a rubric which includes multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. The all-leukemia standardized mortality ratio was slightly, but nonsignificantly, elevated (SMR = 124). However, mortality due to acute myeloid leukemia was significantly elevated (SMR = 176).

A local bill that would stop school cell tower construction in Anne Arundel County for about a year was approved by county lawmakers at Friday's delegation meeting.

Annapolis Republican Del. Herb McMillan's House Bill 727would halt wireless telecommunications tower construction for about a year starting from June 1 to June 30, 2016 with any proposals in the pipeline before that date not affected by the moratorium.

With the legislation approved as a delegation bill it may have an easier path through the General Assembly — which often gives courtesy to local bills — but McMillan said the discussions aren't over.

His bill still needs to be voted out of committee, which had a hearing on March 12. The bill also needs approval from the House and Senate.

"There are well-financed groups opposed to this bill," McMillan said.

Opposition to the bill includes both Milestone Communications and the wireless carrier companies, which spoke against McMillan's bill during the March 12 hearing.

Bethanne Cooley, wireless company lobbyist, said during the hearing the bill would prevent the carrier's from improving their service.

"We believe this legislation could reduce the ability of wireless telecommunications carriers to deploy facilities needed for public safety and to provide broadband services in one of Maryland's most densely populated counties," she said at the hearing.

On top of the moratorium the legislation also would create a work group to determine:

Whether the General Assembly or county Board of Education should establish the policy on leasing public school property to private entities.

Whether modification should be made to school system policy and implementing regulations on cell phone towers.

If schools are receiving a fair market value for the constructed towers.

The work group would be compromised of three Anne Arundel County delegates, one senator, one county public school system representative, one member appointed by county executive and one appointed by the County Council.

The work group would release its findings to the Anne Arundel County Board of Education and county delegation by Dec. 31.

The school system currently has a contract with Reston-based Milestone Communications, which has built one tower at Broadneck High School.

School spokesman Bob Mosier said the school board voted to oppose the moratorium on March 4. The school system earns $25,000 on initially constructed towers with a carrier along with 40 percent of the revenues from the tower and additional money per carrier attached to the tower.

The towers also have space for fire and police officials to expand their wireless communications, he said.

And education officials notify parents, property owners and alert them before a tower is constructed, Mosier said. There currently are plans for towers at the Annapolis Middle School, the Center for Applied Technology North in Severn and Corkran Middle School in Glen Burnie and the campus of Magothy and Severn River middle schools in Arnold.

"This is a public and transparent process," he said.

Before Friday's vote McMillan's bill was originally passed at a quick meeting shortly before session on Thursday, where it was amended to extend the moratorium to county property. It also originally tasked the school system with generating the report, but was amended to create the work group.

The delegates voted to remove the county property amendment Friday after a letter from The Attorney General's office stated the legislation could impact schools but not general county property.

Friday's meeting was likely the last for the delegation this session, with lawmakers saying they don't plan to come together again unless necessary. Legislators are making their push to get bills crossed over to the House and Senate before Monday's crossover deadline.

Delegation Chair Pam Beidle, D-Linthicum, congratulated the group on their efforts and urged them to consider things to do after session ends, such as site visits.

After a short break of course.

"Coming through session to me is like having a baby," Beidle told the delegation. "You don't want to talk about meetings for a little while."

Ignorance Drowns Out Precaution

NY Times Tech Columnist Has Hands Slapped

The New York Times went into damage control mode
yesterday after Nick Bilton, a tech columnist and a rising star at the
newspaper, suggested that precaution is the best approach to the use of cell phones
and wearable electronics.

No sooner had Bilton’s column hit print that Margaret Sullivan,
the Times’ Public Editor, chastised him for his naive analysis.
Sullivan targeted the lack of “sophisticated evaluation of serious research.”

The Electromagnetic Assault on Our Brains and Bodies

MARCH 19, 2015AFP

By James Spounias —

Just how bad is electromagnetic pollution to our health and well-being? Don’t ask authorities who have their heads in the sand or corporate interests who are aligned with the military-industrial complex.

The establishment, with few exceptions, dismisses concerns about electromagnetic pollution as paranoia from conspiracy believers. The derisive charge of “tin foil hatted” stems from those who made aluminum foil hats to shield their brains from direct electromagnetic assault. But are those people crazy? Informed Americans know where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

As far back as 1972, information appeared in the mainstream press about how the U.S. Navy was testing microwaves on sailors: “Medical reports link rays to cataracts, damage to male reproductive organs, cardiovascular changes and even psychological problems. Except for cataracts, however, the health damage is uncertain and unexplored. The Navy’s research project, using human guinea pigs, is intended to find out how dangerous microwaves really are.”

The column noted that the Soviet Union “set a limit 1,000 times smaller than the 10 milliwatts per square centimeter permitted by our own Defense Department,” hinting to even the most skeptical reader that microwave radiation posed a serious threat to health. Ironically, our government, unlike our then sworn enemy, the “evil” Soviet Union, cared little about the health of sailors and eventually the rest of us.

In 1972, microwave ovens were relatively new to the American market. A large and clunky model first appeared in 1967. There were no cellular towers, telephones and no “smart meters,” let alone the widespread use of military radar.

Fast forward to 1996, where President Bill Clinton signed the most significant overhaul of telecommunications legislation in 60 years, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed for mergers of previously segregated industries via “cross-ownership.” Then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Ron Brown, the secretary of Commerce, helped ensure passage of this legislation. Consumer safety crusader Ralph Nader noted it was “one of the single biggest giveaways in U.S. corporate welfare history.”

One lesser known aspect of the legislation virtually strips local communities of the ability to limit the construction of cell phone towers, even if they pose threats to health and the environment. Local control was debated in Congress where then-Republican House member Porter Goss argued that nothing in the act should “preempt the ability of local officials to determine the placement and construction of . . . new [cellular phone] towers. Land use has always been, and . . . should continue to be, in the domain of the authorities in the areas directly affected.”

Unfortunately, Goss’s argument didn’t win out. Instead, authority rested with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and challenges on the basis of danger to health in state courts were handed off to the FCC under the doctrine of federal preemption. The 1996 act put the sole question of environmental safety in the hands of the FCC, giving them the exclusive jurisdiction to set “safe” limits. The few successful legal challenges to cell phone tower construction were and are based upon devaluation of property arguments, rather than health risks.

What about the health risks? In 1995, Dr. Henry Lai and Dr. Narendra Singh at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle demonstrated in animal studies that cell phone radiation causes DNA damage. The attack on Lai and Singh was fast. Motorola planned to “war-game” the research, according to an internal memo leaked to Microwave News.

With millions of consumers having Motorola’s cell phones buzzing their brains, how kind of this giant to thwart research that may show a negative causal connection between cell phone radiation and health. Motorola knew how to play the game—manipulate research to muddy the waters.

Seattle Magazine reported “After initially accepting industry funding for continued research from the Wireless Technology Research (WTR) program (created to manage $25 million in research funds), Lai and Singh wrote an open letter to Microwave Newsquestioning restrictions placed on their research by the funders. After that, the head of WTR sent a memo asking then-UW president Richard McCormick to fire Lai and Singh. McCormick refused, but the dustup sent a clear message to Lai and his colleagues.”

“This shocked me,” Lai said. “The letter trying to discredit me, the ‘war games’ memo. As a scientist doing research, I was not expecting to be involved in a political situation. It opened my eyes on how games are played in the world of business.”

Electromagnetic pollution—radiation from non-ionizing gamma rays—has the same effect as nuclear ionizing radiation, albeit in a slow-burn fashion. Leading German radiation expert Dr. Heyo Eckel, an official of the German Medical Association, stated: “The injuries that result from radioactive radiation are identical with the effects of electromagnetic radiation. The damages are so similar that they are hard to differentiate.”

Electronic warfare expert speaking

Len Walker / The Star March 19, 2015 12:00 AM

As a member of the Comox Valley Electro Health Group, I have become aware of how BC Hydro is forcing people to pay a fee of some $33 a month just so they can continue living without a smart meter on their home.

To combat this rude, aggressive behaviour, the group has contacted and will present retired Canadian Forces Captain Jerry Flynn, an electronic warfare expert, to speak on the harmful nature of products being pushed upon us such as smart meters, WiFi, baby monitors, cell towers and cell phones. The World Health Organization has classified them with other cancer-causing agents.

We are very fortunate to have Flynn's expertise and willingness to share what he knows. Unlike the propaganda that BC Hydro continues to spread, Flynn tells it like it is.

The event in Courtenay will take place at the Florence Filberg Centre on Thursday, April 2 in the Rotary Hall, 7-9 p.m., admission by donation.

DTE & Consumers Energy Smart Meters

If you have received a threatening letter from DTE that implies your service will be shut off, read our How to Respond page and contact us. These letters are not official notices. They are a ploy by DTE to raise fear. DTE representatives occasionally come to customer’s doors and tell them they have 2 weeks to accept a smart meter or their power will be shut off. They are not legally able to take such action. Read more on our How to Respond page.See the reports Michigan residents have sent to us about how smart meters have affected their health on our smartmeterhealth page. View gripping testimony of health problems at the Michigan Smart Meter Hearings. Nearly 100 people testifying about the effects on their health. Watch the videos (Part 1 and Part 2).

Many people in Michigan are experiencing severe symptoms and health effects from DTE and Consumers Energy smart meters and their radio-off opt-out meters. (DTE calls smart meters advanced meters and uses descriptions like advanced metering technology in an effort to avoid the negative publicity associated with smart meters.) Smart meters and DTE’s radio-off opt-out meter have a dramatic impact on health because of the pulsed waves they emit, both radiofrequency (wireless) waves and what is commonly called dirty electricity. For some people, this impact is immediately apparent in the form of insomnia, tinnitus, memory problems, and many other health issues. For others, the health effects come down the road. Thousands of independent, non–industry-funded scientific studies (for example, Bioinitiative Report; Forty Scientists) have shown that the electromagnetic frequencies emitted by smart and digital meters cause severe health problems, including cancer, ADD, and the breaching of the blood-brain barrier. Read our health page for more information. For an excellent video, mp3, and Powerpoint presentation on how smart meters work, why what the utility industry tells you shades the truth, and how radiofrequency (RF) emissions affect health, click here.

DTE representatives have started coming to customer’s doors and telling them they have 2 weeks to accept a smart meter or their power will be shut off. The are not legally able to take such action. Read more on our How to Respond page.

Very importantly, DTE’s opt-out meter will not protect your health! Click here to learn about the dirty electricity that both smart meters and digital meters generate. Learn what to do about it, by clicking here and here. Consumers Energy is currently allowing residential customers to keep their current meter. However, it is unlikely that this will continue. Click here to learn more.

Privacy

Governmental agencies, law firms, corporations, and other mainstream and nonprofit groups recognize the far-reaching privacy implications of smart meters and the radio-off opt-out meter. Because they gather usage data in such a fine-grained manner (up to every 15 seconds), they are capable of tracking when you are home and the appliances you use and when you use them. This data can be sold to third parties, with mind-boggling consequences. The European Union has issued a stunning report on the far-reaching implications of this. Smart meter data has also been used by law enforcement in an attempt to catch criminals—unfortunately, the usage patterns of law-abiding individuals can be the same as those of law-breakers, with the result that police have broken into the homes of law-abiding citizens. See our Privacy page for more information.

Costs

Your utility bills will go up. The utilities have made it clear that advanced (smart) meters will be used to bill time-of-use rates, which means you will pay more when demand is highest. Consumers Digest says: “Smart-meter conversion represents little more than a boondoggle that is being foisted on consumers by the politically influential companies that make the hardware and software that are required for the smart-meter conversion.”The former CEO of the Illinois utility ComEd agrees, as do the governors and attorney generals of a variety of states, including our own. See our Costs page for more information.

Who We Are

The Smart Meter Education Network is a group of citizens who have come together to educate the community, work for legislation, and take legal and other action that will protect all citizens, especially children, the elderly, and the chronically ill. Smart meters affect all of us, and will affect our children and our planet for decades to come unless we take action now.

People come to this issue for many different reasons—health impacts, environmental impacts, privacy issues, cyber-security, costs. Whatever your particular concerns, we welcome you to our community and hope that you will join us in our effort to preserve the health of our children, ourselves, and our environment. Click the links on the sidebars to learn more.

The Smart Meter Education Network is a non-partisan group dedicated to

educating citizens, legislators and activists about

the health and environmental impacts of smart and digital meters

the privacy, hacking and other concerns relating to such technology

ensuring that customers have the right to have an analog meter on their home or business

supporting meaningful legislation that will address these concerns

taking legal and community action to preserve health, privacy, and the environment

promoting safe alternatives to smart meters and AMI technology

All of these actions require money and volunteer effort. Please donate!! Your health is worth it. Call or email us to volunteer. See our What You Can Do page for more information on actions you can take.

Newsletter, Facebook—Stay Up to Date

Stay up to date by subscribing to our newsletter (it comes out every 1 to 4 weeks). We constantly update our website, so check back often. You can find time-sensitive actions to take under our “Take Action Now” tab. We also use Facebook to send out quick news updates. (While we understand the privacy concerns with Facebook, at this point in time it is a useful tool for us, and is a great way to spread the word about smart meters. If you only wish to use Facebook for access to our updates, you can get an account without revealing personal information—it’s all in what you choose to share, and you can give them any name or birth date you like.)

Our newsletter comes out every 1 to 4 weeks. It will keep you informed and tell you what actions you can take to fight smart meters. Note that most email programs will filter out our newsletter unless you adjust your email settings. Even though you may receive individual emails from us, when we send the newsletter out to a large group, the emails may be placed in a folder other than your inbox. This happened to us! We weren’t even getting our own newsletter. Then we did for a while, but suddenly gmail started putting it in our Spam folder again. Please make sure you look for emails from smartmetereducationnetwork@ gmail. com in your Promotions, Junk, or other folders. Please contact your email provider to learn how to adjust your settings, or search on the internet.

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About Me

While I have always been extremely health conscious and am presently in excellent health, I did become temporarily out-of-commission (i.e. I was really sick) in 2005 with a number of at the time unexplainable symptoms. I was quite puzzled at the time because I had been eating mainly organically grown food, drinking spring water, doing Yoga every morning, and going to the gym several times a week. In other words, I was doing everything one is supposed to do to stay healthy. I was not supposed to get sick. It took me six months before discovering or even imagining the main source of the problem - which was in fact "overexposure to electromagnetic" - especially microwave - radiation. I was living within 200 meters of two cell phone towers at the time and within 500 meters of a 3rd one with numerous WiFi signals bleeding into my apartment from adjacent neighbors. I developed a host of symptoms, which are found in what has been misleadingly described as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) -- but much more accurately described as Radio Wave or Microwave Sickness. Large numbers of people in the USA suddenly started getting sick in 1984...